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[oodavid]

Finally think I can say that basic Facebook integration is done, stable and useful! Hurrah!

PARTICLE SIMULATE ALL THE THINGS!

My thoughts exactly!

[oodavid]

I'm an idiot... Time to tidy this lot up!

[oodavid]

Tidy. Even the variables and assets. All 600 references.

I had someone email me to say they played this till 2am and was late for work. Best compliment ever!

[oodavid]

Turns out the reason the last release didn't work with facebook as I was missing an extra permission 'publish_actions'; since I have a developer account, I automatically get all permissions; who knew? Hey, it's a learning curve!

So I've re-submitted the game for the extra permission as well as to get some extra OpenGraph stories reviewed (notably "Beat a Level")

[JobLeonard]

You can play this on facebook now? You'll ruin productivity everywhere!

[oodavid]

You can play this on facebook now? You'll ruin productivity everywhere!

In due course yeah, I've a lot of things to do before I can get it on Facebook canvas, mostly layout fixes since it's landscape rather than portrait! Bah.

[oodavid]

Started planning the next couple of chapters, decided to sink a little time with the editor to make my life easier - it's starting to look rather tasty.


click for big

Yup, 74 new levels in the pipeline!

[JobLeonard]

This pleases me. And my girlfriend too.

Eagerly awaiting the update!

[oodavid]

It'll likely be start of January as Gavin needs to draw up the map to go with it!

In other news, I had the Facebook permissions accepted, quick turnaround this time too, about 36 hours - I was fully expecting a couple of weeks over the Christmas period.

[Pidroh]

Dear oodavid, the mechanic is interesting enough and the graphics fit well!

I'm playing through your game right now on a very small screen (320 x 240, I believe, Galaxy Young) and it's very annoying to play with it! With the sound it gets better (can't always have sound though), so please add a graphical feedback for when I touch a ball, this graphic feedback has to be bigger than my finger (maybe a circle on the last thing I touched? Because it's hard to swipe if I'm not sure my touch registered (and it doesn't sometimes because the graphics are tiny.

Also, the promotional art for the game is kinda bad, your google play icon and google play banner are very boring, haha, the in game graphics are better, which is very weird. Please consider touching them up, increasing contrast a bit, putting more gameplay stuff in to the promo stuff, no idea.

[oodavid]

Dear oodavid, the mechanic is interesting enough and the graphics fit well!

Thank you!

I'm playing through your game right now on a very small screen (320 x 240, I believe, Galaxy Young) and it's very annoying to play with it! With the sound it gets better (can't always have sound though), so please add a graphical feedback for when I touch a ball, this graphic feedback has to be bigger than my finger (maybe a circle on the last thing I touched? Because it's hard to swipe if I'm not sure my touch registered (and it doesn't sometimes because the graphics are tiny.

That's a great idea, 240x320 is pretty damn small, but I'm sure that problem exists for bigger screens too! I've added it to my todo list; I'm planning another release in January, but it should be added in the release after that

Also, the promotional art for the game is kinda bad, your google play icon and google play banner are very boring, haha, the in game graphics are better, which is very weird. Please consider touching them up, increasing contrast a bit, putting more gameplay stuff in to the promo stuff, no idea.

Yeah, that's my doing - the designer Gavin works on this when he can, in reality he doesn't have much time so a lot of the peripheral artwork comes down to me fudging existing assets! Check the earlier posts in this thread to see how bad my programmer artwork is, it's embarrassing!

[oodavid]

Once again, I have found myself Yak Shaving, but that's OK, tis all in the name of progress!

As part of designing the new Chapter(s) I've decided to pick up another item off my todo list; a more robust way to manage post-level-trigger events - as it stands there are a few separate routines that hook into the level-completion event and compete to do things, so I've opted to refactor those routines into a single system. The triggers are:

• Unlock a Postcard
• Rate / Review the game
• Prompt user to Login with Facebook to Save Progress
• Prompt to Buy Stuff to improve the game
• Unlock "Secrets of the gaming universe"
• Say "Thanks for playing, more soon"
• and should scale to include other events

The unexpected part is that I want a better way to manage my Open Graph objects (Postcards, Secrets etc.) so that's being added into my level editor today, should be all done in an hour or so

[oodavid]

Well, Christmas has been slow for development, but I've finally put "triggers" to bed in the time in between times. Decided to give the editor a good going over, some of the backend logic was messy as all hell, but now I've good a nice unified logical approach to the different data types I need for the game: (Levels, Open-Graph Objects, Events)


doesn't look like much, but it's pretty darn intuitive to use

In other news I've finally got round to writing a bunch of Facebook posts for my adoring fans to enjoy. Good times!

Now... to patch an SSL vulnerability! Woohoo!

[oodavid]

Hmmm, that's not right.

Started re-arranging the levels so that each chapter has a single theme - the first being "drop the runes" the next being "perfect molecules" and the new chapter will be "clear the sludge" - the secret paths will be tangential in theme which should keep the game dynamic feeling!

[oodavid]

After some feedback; while reviewing the tutorials I thought I'd try out language relating to sewing / buttons, I think it might be more "accessible" to non-scientifically minded people and could lead to a better name than "molecule match"....

What do you think?



EDIT: Apparently it makes people think of button moon! (via Facebook)


click for youtube

[oodavid]

This could turn out alright!

[Rebusmind]

I really like the stitching button holes together metaphor. Now I'm thinking of visuals like Kirby's Epic Yarn, though.

[JobLeonard]

At least people won't say you cloned that other game any more

[oodavid]

Getting there... no textures just yet as I'm worried that will make me need to add textures everywhere - I just want to know if this is what I want. I think it is TBH

I really like the stitching button holes together metaphor. Now I'm thinking of visuals like Kirby's Epic Yarn, though.

I can live with that! Just had a peek and Kirby's Epic Yarn looks pretty snazzy

At least people won't say you cloned that other game any more

Truth will out!

[oodavid]

As yet untested spritesheet - I just hope it's not too cramped on-screen...


click for big!

EDIT - updated palette to highlight "complete" buttons and reduce noise at small scale...


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